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The real winner of Denver's Restaurant Week: not the restaurants

By Bobby Fitzgerald

Posted:
03/08/2013 12:01:00 AM MST

Updated:
03/08/2013 10:04:56 AM MST

Justin Russell center, talks with guest James Lewis at Twelve Restaurant in LoDo recently. The restaurant opted out of participating in Denver Restaurant Week this year. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

There are many winners from Denver Restaurant Week, but out of all of them, the restaurant community wins the least. The biggest winner: OpenTable.com.

Yes, the publicly traded, California-based company with fewer employees in Colorado than most restaurants have busboys rakes in tens of thousands of dollars from restaurant week, with virtually no investment. Their "partnership" consists of charging the restaurants 50 cents to $7 for each person they book for restaurant week. Their minor contribution as a sponsor goes to Visit Denver, which promotes their site as the source to book a table rather than encouraging diners to go directly to a restaurant's website (or even call), which saves the restaurant 50 percent on the cost of the booking. Links are placed from DenverRestaurantWeek.com to OpenTable.com rather than the participating restaurant's website.

There are 400,000 meals served during restaurant week. If half of those diners bypassed OpenTable, it would save local restaurants more than $100,000 in fees, keeping the money in Colorado. Visit Denver needs only to stop linking to OpenTable and just link to the restaurant's website to make this happen.

The next winner appears to be the event itself. Visit Denver states the event does not generate a profit. With more than $100,000 in registration fees, plus sponsors like Lexus and Frontier Airlines, well, maybe a chef should get involved who knows how to limit waste. Many truly think the event generates money to draw more visitors to Denver. But if Denver Restaurant Week does not make money and most restaurants have stated it is not a profitable effort, then OpenTable.com needs to get the "thank you" cards ready.

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Finally, there are the restaurants who pay between $300 and $600 to get listed in the event, plus $2 to $28 to OpenTable for each party of four who comes in the door and is told that the same price charged in 2004 works today. Assume just 3 percent annual inflation for the last 10 years, and restaurants are actually charging $18.48 for a three-course dinner. A 15 percent tip to a server in 2004 is only a 10 percent tip today.

Every other city of Denver's stature that holds a restaurant week has a $30 to $40 menu. Going to a $30 menu would actually create 37 new jobs, according to National Restaurant Association statistics, and increase restaurant worker gratuities by $200,000. If Visit Denver decided that sum was fair in 2004, it must now believe it is fair that restaurants discount 30 percent.

Yes, $10 million in meals are sold that week. But the industry rung up $10 billion in revenue for the state in 2012. The event has grown out of a NFL-like monopoly on the restaurant scene for that week. Many restaurants feel they must join.

Visit Denver must stop disregarding the interest of Denver restaurants. The restaurant community is the only irreplaceable part of the week. Visit Denver insists it talks to local restaurants, but the costs to local restaurants speak for themselves.

Even setting the fees aside, there are three questions:

1. Does California's OpenTable deserve to win from Denver restaurant week more than the Denver restaurants themselves?

2. Should restaurants be forced to charge 30 percent less in real dollars than they did a decade ago?

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